Cast Adrift eBook

“Is the evil of lottery-policies so great that
you class it with the curse of rum?” asked Mr.
Dinneford.

“It is more concealed, but as all-pervading
and almost as disastrous in its effects. The
policy-shops draw from the people, especially the
poor and ignorant, hundreds of thousands of dollars
every year. There is no more chance of thrift
for one who indulges in this sort of gambling than
there is for one who indulges in drink. The vice
in either case drags its subject down to want, and
in most cases to crime. I could point you to
women virtuous a year ago, but who now live abandoned
lives; and they would tell you, if you would question
them, that their way downward was through the policy-shops.
To get the means of securing a hoped-for prize—­of
getting a hundred or two hundred dollars for every
single one risked, and so rising above want or meeting
some desperate exigency—­virtue was sacrificed
in an evil moment.”

“The whisky-shops brutalize, benumb and debase
or madden with cruel and murderous passions; the policy-shops,
more seductive and fascinating in their allurements,
lead on to as deep a gulf of moral ruin and hopeless
depravity. I have seen the poor garments of a
dying child sold at a pawn-shop for a mere trifle by
its infatuated mother, and the money thrown away in
this kind of gambling. Women sell or pawn their
clothing, often sending their little children to dispose
of these articles, while they remain half clad at home
to await the daily drawings and receive the prize
they fondly hope to obtain, but which rarely, if ever,
comes.

“Children learn early to indulge this vice,
and lie and steal in order to obtain money to gratify
it. You would be amazed to see the scores of
little boys and girls, white and black, who daily visit
the policy-shops in this neighborhood to put down the
pennies they have begged or received for stolen articles
on some favorite numbers—­quick-witted,
sharp, eager little wretches, who talk the lottery
slang as glibly as older customers. What hope
is there in the future for these children? Will
their education in the shop of a policy-dealer fit
them to become honest, industrious citizens?”

All this was so new and dreadful to Mr. Dinneford
that be was stunned and disheartened; and when, after
an interview with the missionary that lasted over
an hour, he went away, it was with a feeling of utter
discouragement. He saw little hope of making head
against the flood of evil that was devastating this
accursed region.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MRS. HOYT, alias Bray, found Pinky Swett,
but she did not find the poor cast-off baby.
Pinky had resolved to make it her own capital in trade.
She parleyed and trifled with Mrs. Hoyt week after
week, and each did her best to get down to the other’s
secret, but in vain. Mutually baffled, they parted
at last in bitter anger.

One day, about two months after the interview between
Mrs. Dinneford and Mrs. Hoyt described in another
chapter, the former received in an envelope a paragraph
cut from a newspaper. It read as follows: